Yes Or No?
Have you ever noticed how often people make decisions which they
are not really prepared to stand by? That a yes is seldom (or
often not) a full throated YES but a way to avoid saying "No".
In our work, in our commitments to each other, in the lives we
generally lead. You accept a lunch invitation but opt out at the
last minute because you have something else to do. You say yes
to a meeting and back out because your aunt turned up from outer
Mongolia and wants to meet you for tea. Wishy washy, somehow
seems like the flavor of the day. Keep as many doors open as
possible so that you can wriggle out of a commitment at any
point when the going gets rough. I have often thought about
that. Whether when I say yes I really mean yes, or whether I say
yes because I have felt pressured into it. I check out the
quality of my yes, the strength of it and am learning ever so
slowly that in actual fact, the absence of a full bodied "YES"
amounts to a subtle "No". The end result is that most of us are
stuck in a grey zone which is neither here nor there, neither
yes nor no, neither the feeling of "I really want it" nor the
certainty that "I don't want it."
Maybe the problem is that we have not really learnt to say NO.
To say a full bodied NO when we don't want something. Our "No"
like our "Yes" most often comes across in a diluted fashion,
which could mean just about everything. It is not for nothing
that many Europeans feel intrigued by the Indian head shake
which can be taken as a "Yes," a "No" or a "Maybe." As my friend
Bibsi used to often tease me when I visited her in Germany, what
you mean is "Maybe yes, maybe no!"
Eventually, we feel resentful at having to do stuff we don't
want to do, because we don't have the nerve to stand up and do
what we want to do. We shy away from doing what would make us
really happy because we are afraid not to do what is expected of
us. Blame it on your friends, your relatives, your children,
your parents. All society's fault.
In fact all of society seems stuck in this grey zone, this non
committal terrain which is rapidly wearing down our backbone.
Seeing the danger of ending up totally spineless you see that
there is no option but to begin to search within yourself for
what you want, and then to stand up for it. If we were to search
deep enough within our minds and hearts we would surely come up
with the fact - that to stand by one's own truth is to
automatically support the truth of the world. When the heart
functions according to its truth, it allows the liver and
kidneys and all other organs too, to function according to
theirs. Naturally this applies to any part of the body.
A very simple truth. The question is, do you dare to see it for
yourself?
Uma's Website: www.basicindia.net